The Latest: Trump complains about Ryan, Bush and Graham
By Associated Press
May 6, 2016 5:37 PM CDT
Supporters arrive at a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Friday, May 6, 2016, in Omaha, Neb. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)   (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on the 2016 presidential campaign (all times Eastern):

6:19 p.m.

Donald Trump all but sealed up the Republican presidential nomination three days ago, but he showed little interest in working to rally the party to his side at an event on Friday in Nebraska.

Speaking in an airport hangar, Trump complained about South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham's renewed criticisms and returned to criticizing former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has been out of the race for months.

Both men said Friday they could not support his candidacy.

Trump is also facing resistance from House Speaker Paul Ryan. He says he's not yet ready to support Trump.

When Trump mentioned Ryan, boos echoed throughout the private air hangar near the Omaha airport.

Trump says he figured Ryan would back his candidacy as a matter of routine. "I don't know what happened," he says.

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6:01 p.m.

Donald Trump is now encouraging his supporters to vote for him in Tuesday's primaries, even though his Republican rivals have dropped out of the race for president.

The presumptive GOP nominee kicked off a rally in Omaha, Nebraska, on Friday by saying, "We have to go on Tuesday and vote because we're looking to break the all-time record."

It was a change from Thursday night, when he told a crowd in West Virginia not to bother and hold their votes until November. Both states hold their primaries next Tuesday.

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4:48 p.m.

Donald Trump is unloading on Lindsey Graham, calling the South Carolina senator "beyond rehabilitation" and "an embarrassment" to his state.

A former campaign rival of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Graham said in a CNN interview Friday that he can't support Trump's candidacy.

Trump responded with a scathing statement that mocked Graham's campaign loss.

He says: "I fully understand why Lindsey Graham cannot support me. If I got beaten as badly as I beat him, and all the other candidates he endorsed, I would not be able to give my support either. He was a poor representative and an embarrassment to the great people of South Carolina."

Trump says he intends to unify the party, but Graham "has shown himself to be beyond rehabilitation."

He adds, "And like the voters who rejected him, so will I!"

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4:40 p.m.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is holding a fundraiser to help Chris Christie pay off his own presidential campaign's debt and to raise money for the New Jersey Republican Party.

The pair will appear at what is being billed as a "New Jersey rally" in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, on May 19.

An email invitation to the event lists the price of attendance as $200 per person. It says all proceeds will benefit Chris Christie for President Inc.

Christie confidant and Republican National Committeeman Bill Palatucci says Trump will also be appearing at a separate event in the same venue benefiting the state party. He says those tickets will cost $25,000.

The New Jersey governor was one of Trump's earliest and most prominent backers and has appeared frequently with him on the campaign trail.

Christie ended his campaign following a disappointing showing in the New Hampshire primary. His campaign account was $250,000 in the red at the end of March.

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4:37 p.m.

Former Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush says he won't vote for Donald Trump this November — and won't cast his ballot for Hillary Clinton, either.

Bush says on Facebook that Trump has not demonstrated the temperament or strength of character needed to serve as president. Of Clinton, he says the former secretary of state is untrustworthy.

He adds that he's not optimistic either candidate will put the country on a better course. He says he plans to "support principled conservatives at the state and federal levels" this fall.

The former two-term governor of Florida was an early front-runner for the Republican nomination, raising staggering sums of money to support his bid.

But he never caught on with voters in the same way as Trump, who often mocked the brother and son of former presidents as "low energy."

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3:15 p.m.

With only one candidate left in the race, delegates to the Republican national convention are starting to rally around billionaire businessman Donald Trump — a few at a time.

All nine delegates from the U.S. territory of American Samoa have voted to back Trump. Trump has also picked up seven delegates in Louisiana. Five had been pledged to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, and two were uncommitted.

In a statement, the Rubio delegates from Louisiana say Trump may not have been their first choice, but he is the choice of millions of voters.

After Trump won the Indiana primary Tuesday, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich suspended their campaigns.

With 1,086 delegates, Trump has 86 percent of the delegates needed to clinch the nomination.

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1:55 p.m.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham says he won't support presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

The South Carolina senator and former White House hopeful says in a statement he doesn't believe Trump is a "reliable Republican conservative nor has he displayed the judgment and temperament to serve as commander in chief."

Graham said he won't support Democrat Hillary Clinton either. He said she represents a third term for President Barack Obama.

The senator says he will help to elect down-ballot Republicans and urges people to vote this year. He says no matter what, he will do everything he can to help the next president.

Graham has no plans to attend the Republican convention in Cleveland in July.

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1:10 p.m.

President Barack Obama isn't ready to urge Sen. Bernie Sanders to get out of the Democratic primary, but he suggested the Vermont senator's prospects are slim.

Asked whether he think Sanders should call it quits, Obama says, "Let's let the process play itself out." But he added, "I think everybody knows what the math is." He said Sanders has done an "extraordinary job" of raising important issues.

Rival Hillary Clinton holds a sizable lead over Sanders with more than 300 pledged delegates and has received about 3 million more votes than Sanders during the primaries. Including superdelegates, Clinton is more than 90 percent of the way to clinching the nomination.

Obama has said he plans to campaign hard for the nominee, once the party has rallied around a single candidate.

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1:05 p.m.

President Barack Obama says "you have to ask (Paul) Ryan" what it means for the Republican Party that the House speaker won't swing behind Donald Trump as the GOP's presumptive nominee.

Obama says Republican officials and voters will have to decide for themselves whether they feel comfortable with Trump as their representative.

Ryan, in a televised interview Thursday, said he was not yet ready to support Trump as the GOP nominee.

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12:45 p.m.

In his first remarks about Donald Trump's presumptive nominee status, President Barack Obama has a message for the media: "This is not entertainment. This is not a reality show."

Obama is urging reporters to take Trump seriously and vet him thoroughly. At a brief news conference at the White House on Friday, Obama told reporters to scrutinize the candidates closely, to fact check their policies and to hold them to their past statements.

He says, "emphasizing the spectacle and the circus, that's not something we can afford."

Obama says if reporters do their job and people are well informed "I'm confident our democracy will work."

Asked about Trump's taco bowl tweet Thursday saying "I love Hispanics," Obama said he wouldn't comment on Trump's twitter feed.

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11 a.m.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is threatening a floor fight over rules and platform planks at the party's summer convention if the Democratic National Committee stacks the committees with supporters of Hillary Clinton.

Sanders writes in a letter to Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz that the makeup of the standing committees should reflect the level of support that he and Clinton received in the primaries and caucuses.

He says many of his supporters have not been included and notes Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy will be in charge of the convention's platform committee and former Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank will run the rules committee. He calls both "aggressive attack surrogates" for Clinton.

Sanders says if the process is unfair, he'll challenge platform planks, electoral reform planks and rules changes.

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9 a.m.

The Republican party chairman says he supports Donald Trump as the party's presidential nominee. Reince Priebus is breaking with House Speaker Paul Ryan, who said Thursday he's not ready to back Trump.

Priebus says he backs Trump even if he disagrees with ideas like banning Muslims from entering the U.S.

The chairman says a meeting next week will help the party start to unify behind Trump. He says Ryan is "just being honest," that Ryan is "not there yet, but he wants to get there."

Priebus says it will take some time for some people to work through their differences with Trump.

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8:45 a.m.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump says Britain is "better off without" the European Union.

That's in contrast with President Barack Obama, who has cautioned British voters against leaving the EU. Britain will vote June 23 on whether to remain in the 28-nation bloc.

"I would say that they're better off without it, personally," Trump told Fox News on Wednesday.

"But I'm not making that as a recommendation, just my feeling. I know Great Britain very well. I know, you know, the country very well. I have a lot of investments there. I would say that they're better off without it. But I want them to make their own decisions."

Trump said the migration crisis "has been a horrible thing for Europe; a lot of that was pushed by the EU."

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8:20 a.m.

Former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson says he was "personally very disappointed" to hear House Speaker Paul Ryan withhold his support for Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee.

Carson tells MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show that "if we divide the party, we ensure the victory of the opposite party. And we've got to be more mature than that."

Carson, who is helping Trump decide on a vice presidential running mate, said Friday: "I hope Speaker Ryan and many others, as time goes on, realizes that."

On the vice presidential selection, Carson told an interviewer that if there's a Democrat who subscribes to the Republican Party's beliefs, "let me know."

"This is such an important position," Carson added. "You don't want to exclude anybody just on the basis of one characteristic."

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